Obsessing over individual players and political chaos leaves less time to focus on the misogyny. And that’s for the best, isn’t it guys?

Fair play to Bill Gates’s ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, a woman who fronted up to appear on a podcast this week while so many of the men who feature in the latest Epstein files drop found that their diaries had them scheduled to stay hiding under their rocks. Melinda was asked about Jeffrey Epstein, obviously, and executed a very graceful drive-by. “Whatever questions remain there of what I don’t – can’t – even begin to know all of it, those questions are for those people, and for even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me. And I am so happy to be away from all the muck that was there.” Oof. Yet she also said, more generally: “I think we’re having a reckoning as a society, right?”

Cards on the table, I don’t think we’re having one at all. Look at the headlines, or what’s dominating all the news bulletins. We’re talking about anything but the things that most need to be reckoned with. In the UK, we’re talking round the clock about Peter Mandelson, the one guy in this we at least know wasn’t making sexually abusive use of Epstein’s trafficked women and girls. Even if he did offer Epstein image rehab advice, which, as discussed here in depth on Tuesday, was a foray into the moral abyss. (Again.) But the frenzied and remorseless focus on political fallout – and not the male-on-female debasement that is the entire heart of this story, and always has been – is weird, isn’t it? I had a mirthless laugh at the New Statesman’s cover this week, which characterised the Mandelson affair as “the scandal of the century”. Guys, it’s not even the biggest scandal of the scandal.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

As their debts rise, graduates reveal how loans are reshaping careers, finances and faith in the system

• Student loans: why is Martin Lewis clashing with Rachel Reeves?

Growing anger over the plight of millions of graduates saddled with ballooning student loan debts is threatening to develop into a fresh crisis for the government, with Martin Lewis leading the demands for an urgent rethink.

The MoneySavingExpert founder has been critical of the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, over a change to repayment thresholds affecting 5.8 million people who took out a student loan between 2012 and 2023.

Nintendo’s monster-collecting franchise was pilloried as a ‘pestilential Ponzi scheme’ in the 90s. But as its celebrates its 30th birthday, it now stands as a powerful example of video games’ ability to connect people

When I was 11, it was my dream to compete in the Pokémon World Championships, held in Sydney in 2000. I’d come across it in a magazine, and then earnestly set about training teams of creatures, transferring them between my Pokémon Red Game Boy cartridge and the 3D arenas of Pokémon Stadium on the Nintendo 64. I never made it as a player but I did finally achieve this dream on my 26th birthday, when I went to Washington DC to cover the world championships as a journalist. I was deeply moved. Presided over by a giant inflatable Pikachu hanging from the ceiling, the competitors and spectators were united in an unselfconscious love for these games, with their colourful menageries and heartfelt messaging about trust, friendship and hard work.

It is emotional to see the winners lift their trophies after a tense final round of battles, as overwhelmed by their success as any sportsperson. But it’s the pride that the smaller competitors’ parents show in their mini champions that really gets to me. During the first wave of Pokémania in the late 90s, Pokémon was viewed with suspicion by most adults. Now that the first generation of Pokémaniacs have grown up, even becoming parents ourselves, we see it for what it is: an imaginative, challenging and really rather wholesome series of games that rewards every hour that children devote to it.

In need of a last-minute gift? We’ve tested the most beautiful blooms, including sustainable, British-grown and same-day delivery options, for Valentine’s Day and beyond

• The best letterbox gifts

I pride myself on being an excellent gift-giver, and I truly believe the uplifting feeling of finding flowers on the doorstep is hard to beat (unless they’re from an ex who “just wants to talk” – never be that guy).

Flowers are such an easy win for the gift-giver, too. Whether it’s Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day or “just because”, there’s a plethora of online flower delivery services with a range of offerings. Some provide next-day delivery (great if you’ve forgotten an important date and are scrambling); some will deliver flowers monthly via subscription; some will even slip in a box of chocolates, a bottle of fizz or a candle in the delivery.

Best flower delivery overall:
Marks & Spencer

Best budget flower delivery:
Scilly Flowers

At its new Stone Mountain, Georgia, facility, Roomba-like robots shuffle between stacks, another adds shipping labels while another arranges packages in pallets

One of the reasons Amazon is spending billions on robots? They don’t need bathroom breaks. Arriving a few minutes early to the public tour of Amazon’s hi-tech Stone Mountain, Georgia, warehouse, my request to visit the restroom was met with a resounding no from the security guard in the main lobby.

Between the main doors and the entrance security gate, I paced and paced after being told I would have to wait for the tour guide to collect me and other guests for a tour of the 640,000-sq-ft, four-story warehouse.

Styles is playing a record 12 nights at Wembley stadium and 30 at Madison Square Garden, as demand for big artists soars – and audience expectation along with it

Selling out a venue such as London’s O2 Arena used to be considered a high point of an artist’s career. Now, selling out just one night there might seem a bit underwhelming. Raye and Olivia Dean will play six nights apiece at the 20,000-capacity hall this year; Dave is playing four, Ariana Grande is playing a whopping 10. Harry Styles, never one to be outdone, last month announced a staggering 30 dates at New York’s Madison Square Garden, with more than 11 million people applying for presale access, as well as a record-breaking 12 nights at Wembley stadium: the most on a single leg of a tour. Taylor Swift managed a mere eight.

Swift’s Eras tour, which made more than $2bn (£1.6bn), doesn’t seem a complete outlier any more: Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour has lasted four years and made $1.5bn, and the Weeknd’s After Hours Til Dawn tour is also four years deep and has crossed the $1bn mark. It’s even de rigueur for world leaders to get involved in the fight for tickets, with the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, asking the South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, to help book more BTS shows in her country, just as the then Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, publicly asked Swift to come to Canada. Meanwhile, the Singaporean government paid for Swift’s six shows in the country to be a south-east Asia exclusive.

Another Labour MP says Morgan McSweeney should go as Harriet Harman says PM left looking ‘weak, naive and gullible’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer is facing renewed calls to sack his most senior adviser as Downing Street braces itself for another round of leadership speculation when the files relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador are published.

The Labour MP for Stroud, Simon Opher, added his voice to those calling for the departure of Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who was instrumental in the decision to appoint Mandelson despite concerns about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Labour Together hired company to look at Sunday Times and Guardian reporters after article about donations, documents suggest

• UK politics live – latest updates

A thinktank previously run by a Labour minister and the prime minister’s chief of staff paid a PR firm to investigate journalists who were looking into its funding, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

Labour Together, once run by Morgan McSweeney and then by Josh Simons, now a Cabinet Office minister, hired APCO Worldwide to investigate journalists from the Guardian, the Sunday Times and other outlets and to identify their sources, documents suggest.

Steve Wright admitted to abducting, sexually assaulting and murdering Victoria Hall, as well as attempting to kidnap Emily Doherty

A serial killer already serving a whole-life prison sentence for the murders of five women has been further sentenced to 40 years for the killing of Victoria Hall, 17, and the attempted kidnap of Emily Doherty, 22, in 1999.

Steve Wright took Hall’s life for reasons few will ever understand, Mr Justice Bennathan told him as he passed sentence at the Old Bailey on Friday.

Former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes slams Trump for posting racist video on Truth Social; Karoline Leavitt says criticism is ‘fake outrage’

• Trump shares video with racist imagery of Barack and Michelle Obama in late-night posting spree

My colleague Richard Luscombe notes that the White House has tried to brush off the outrage caused by Donald Trump reposting a racist video that depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

In a statement sent to the Guardian, Karoline Leavitt, linked to a post on X last October by a separate rightwing account, which features a 55-second video from which the Obama clip appears to have been taken. It begins with the Obamas depicted as apes, later shows Biden’s head superimposed on a monkey body and other prominent Democrats depicted as other animals, while Trump is shown as a male lion.